The title of Richard Dawkins’s new article in Areo (below) is one I pretty much agree with, and in his analysis he covers a lot of ground. His main point, though, is that determining one’s “race”, which is said to be a social construct with no biological basis (that part isn’t true) is far more difficult, and in many cases impossible, than determining one’s biological sex. For example, what “race” are Barack Obama and Meghan Markle, both having one white parent and one black parent? You can say, “mixed white and black”, which is correct, but society—and especially the media—don’t like that ambiguity, and so tend to observe the “one drop” rule: if you have one “drop of blood” (i.e. relatively few genes) that are more common in blacks than whites, or one great-great-grandparent who is black, you can call yourself “black.” That this doesn’t hold in the reverse direction puzzles me a bit, but surely has to do with the original use of the “one-drop rule” to denigrate and enslave blacks. (A similar construct was used by the Nazis to designate “Jews.) (Now, however, adopting a minority identity has become somewhat of an advantage in the days of affirmative action.)
At any rate, the main point is correct: sex is a binary (with very, very few exceptions), especially when defined as we biologists do: males make (or have the potential to make) small mobile gametes, while females have larger and immobile gametes (or have the potential to make them or used to make them). At birth you see over 99.99% of people fitting this binary, while the remainder are not some intermediate “sex” but represent developmental anomalies. The assertion that sex is not binary is what drove me away from the Society for the Study of Evolution, which declared that both sex and gender are a spectrum; to wit:
Variation in biological sex and in gendered expression has been well documented in many species, including humans, through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Moreover, models predict that variation should exist within the categories that HHS proposes as “male” and “female”, indicating that sex should be more accurately viewed as a continuum. Indeed, experiments in other organisms have confirmed that variation in traits associated with sex is more extensive than for many other traits.
Among all people, evolutionary biologists should most understand that sex in humans and many other species is not only binary, but that binary-ness is the product of natural selection. So be it: this is part of the fulminating wokeness of many scientific societies (see previous posts), in which ideology now trumps scientific truth.
But I digress. Click on the screenshot to read:
There are multiple point in Richard’s article: I’ll group them into a couple of classes:
His tweets are often misunderstood.
Were I Snopes, I would investigate this and say “true”. Yes, sometimes his tweets are hamhanded, and he should have realized the potential for misinterpretation, especially when you’re Richard Dawkins and half the world is gunning for you. But ones like the following are, as he said, Socratic exercises.
This first one got me thinking, as it was intended to. I wrote Richard explaining to him why he was wrong, and then, after some correction and a LOT of cogitation, I realized that he was right:
Conjecture: “There must be a moment in history when two siblings born to the same mother were destined, one to become the ancestor of all humans and the other to become the ancestor of all wombats.”
Is the conjecture necessarily true? Discuss.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 14, 2021
If you don’t see that conjecture as true, read The Ancestor’s Tale.
This one was more problematic for Richard, though I agree with the bit about race, and would agree with the “literally” part so long as “literally men” means “biologically men”, and the same with women. This shades into point 2.
2. He’s been accused of being a transphobe. This is one of the tweets that led to that:
In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as.
Discuss.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 10, 2021
I happen to think that if a white person honestly identifies as black in the same way as someone with gender dysphoria identifies as a member of the opposite biological sex, they should be considered black. That idea is anathema to many, and is why Dolezal was ostracized and kicked out of the Spokane NAACP. The idea that transexuality might have similarities with trans-racialism was also what got the gutsy philosopher Rebecca Tuvel in trouble, and led to mass resignations at Hypatia, the journal that published her paper. But I think it’s a valid philosophical question, and I don’t see why it’s impossible that someone like Dolezal could have identified as black. It’s the racial ferment in America, of course, that has prompted people to try to buttress transsexual identities but reject transracial identites.
As for saying that you should be denigrated if you deny transwomen as being real women, I would agree with Richard so long as the definition of “women” is “biological women” and not “transwoman” or “gendered woman.” But the point is the same as Tuvel’s point in her paper: this is an interesting philosophical issue with real-world ramifications, and should not be seen as taboo or forbidden to discuss.
For those who claim Richard is transphobic, have a look at this part of the article:
If I chose to identify as a hippopotamus, you would rightly say I was being ridiculous. The claim is too facetiously at variance with reality. It’s marginally more ridiculous than the Church’s Aristotelian casuistry in identifying the “substance” of blood with wine and body with bread, while the “accidentals” safely remain an alcoholic beverage and a wafer. Not at all ridiculous, however, was James Morris’s choice to identify as a woman and his gruelling and costly transition to Jan Morris. Her explanation, in Conundrum, of how she always felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body is eloquent and moving. It rings agonizingly true and earns our deep sympathy. We rightly address her with feminine pronouns, and treat her as a woman in social interactions. We should do the same with others in her situation, honest and decent people who have wrestled all their lives with the distressing condition known as gender dysphoria.
Sex transition is an arduous revolution—physiological, anatomical, social, personal and familial—not to be undertaken lightly. I doubt that Jan Morris would have had much time for a man who simply flings on a frock and announces, “I am now a woman.” For Dr Morris, it was a ten-year odyssey. Prolonged hormone treatment, drastic surgery, readjustment of social conventions and personal relationships—those who take this plunge earn our deep respect for that very reason. And why is it so onerous and drastic, courageously worthy of such respect? Precisely because sex is so damn binary! Changing sex is a big deal. Changing the race by which you identify is a doddle in comparison, precisely because race is already a continuous spectrum, rendered so by widespread intermarriage over many generations.
Are those the words of a transphobic?
3.) Sex is binary.
I’ve defended this proposition so many times that I won’t do it again; just do a search on this website. Richard’s correcct take is that sex is biologically binary, and for good evolutionary reasons. Even Darwin noted the binary-ness of sex in animals. Richard delves back into the history of science, discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, and Mendel, to explain why, though all inheritance is particulate, race appears to be a spectrum and sex a binary—yet both are based on genes. Here we have an interesting take on the history of biology. Richard’s ending:
The reason inheritance often seems to be blending—the reason we seem to be a mixture of paternal with maternal, and the reason racial intermarriage leads to a spectrum of intermediates—is polygenes. Though every gene is particulate, lots of genes each contribute their own small effect to, for example, skin colour. And all these small effects together add up to what looks intermediate. It isn’t really like mixing paint but it looks that way if enough particulate polygenes sum up their small effects. If you mix beads it looks that way too, if the beads are small, numerous and viewed from a distance.
Anyway, the point that is relevant to this essay is that particulate, Mendelian, all-or-none, non-blending inheritance was staring Darwin, and Jenkin, and everybody else in the face. It was staring them in the face all along, in the form of the non-blending inheritance of sex. Sex is pretty damn binary. Male versus female is one of surprisingly few genuine dichotomies that can justly escape censure for what I have called “The Tyranny of the Discontinuous Mind.”
Have a read; it’s free. I meant this post to simply call attention to Dawkins’s piece, but, as usual, I wrote more than I intended.
> You can say, “mixed white and black”, which is correct, but society—and especially the media—don’t like that ambiguity
There was a strong ‘mixed race’ visibility movement maybe 20 years ago. I’m glad that I was able to see it. It feels like it is under erasure right now, where many people who were considered ‘mixed’ are now being called ‘black’, and are expected to reject the identity of one of their parents, or of a few of their grandparents. I would love to see more mixed-race visibility again – if only to undermine the current paradigm and remind people how unimportant it all is.
I think what Richard Dawkins says is true in all those cases. I think what gets him in trouble (besides so many just looking to blame him for things) is that he triggers people before he gets to his main point. For example, the hippo comment most likely triggered people as they recalled similar silly remarks from people suggesting one could marry one’s dog when the legalization of same sex marriage was being discussed….so people automatically go there, assume this is what RD’s point is and can’t shake it because their brains are being hijacked by their amygdala. If they continue to read on (many probably don’t as they’ve run off in a rage) they twist whatever else he says to fit their “evil Richard” narrative.
I think this is plausible. I have definitely noticed, for many years going back long before this current woke phenomenon, that very many of the people that ‘hate’ Dawkins either don’t actually know what he has said / written or choose to completely ignore what he has said in favor of a strawman (or straight up fabrication) of their own devising.
I’ve seen this in all types of people ranging from bona fide biologists and other scientists, to non-science academics, to the ‘average person.’ When a person has been slandered frequently over a long period of time a sizable percentage of the ‘audience’ becomes conditioned to simply suppose the person is bad, even when they don’t really know anything about them. I think that by know a clear majority of Dawkins haters don’t know much at all about him, except that he’s bad.
Though I would say that plenty of people reject and denigrate Dawkins without the excuse of a perhaps reasonable trigger. One of Dawkins earliest trashings happened when The Selfish Gene was published, and the stated reasons of the haters were all ludicrous. For example, the title in and of itself may indeed be open to misinterpretation, which is a literary criticism, but there was an entire book behind the title to clarify what he meant by that. And no reasonable interpretation of the book supports that Dawkins thinks genes have agency or that he was making social prescriptions based on biological evolution. And the title is not, to my mind, a reasonable provocation to dismiss further reading and go all Midgley on him.
Yes and the interpretation of The Selfish Gene you describe is exactly the trigger I was describing. “Selfish genes! A gene can’t be selfish! How foolish for Dawkins to suggests that genes have agency! Let’s hate him!” vs. “oh that’s an intriguing title. I’m sure it doesn’t mean agency but let’s read a little & find out”.
Another problem with The Selfish Gene is that many don’t want to talk about genes having any influence at all. We are all blank slates, don’t you know. It’s systemic racism.
Are you familiar with Dawkins’ ‘In Defence Of Selfish Genes’, in which he replies to philosopher Mary Midgley critique of “The Selfish Gene”. Midgley indeed did think that Dawkins’ was arguing that genes have agency.
From the opening paragraph:-
I am. Fully versed in all of the arguments she made against it. All were ludicrous. She simply revealed that either she hadn’t read the book or that she was being disingenuous.
Thanks, Dawkins’ response is excellent!
Robin Ince once said of Dawkins (he knows him quite well) “clever man, should not be allowed on Twitter”. It surprises me that Dawkins is not aware of the shortcomings of Twitter as a medium to convey a nuanced argument and keeps falling into traps.
OTOH, if he confined himself to longer forms, people would take quotes from his articles and post them on Twitter without context.
During the “biblical asteroid” hullaballoo recently, an impact researcher showed an interesting way to aggregate twitter threads. It is an inherent way to sort them, and he made sure that the main analysis was linear (but with references). I also noticed that people have starting to use offline aggregator software and then twitter a link to the clearer analysis.
But it is still a pain to read through all of that.
‘I don’t see why it’s impossible that someone like Dolezal could have identified as black. It’s the racial ferment in America, of course, that has prompted people to try to buttress transsexual identities but reject transracial identities.’
— it’s a 100.000% certain Dolezal did identify as black, from her university days onwards, based on the media reports.
As I’ve written in posts on NZ’s Listenergate, for anyone to be ‘officially’ registered in New Zealand as an Indigenous Maori, one has to satisfy at least one Maori tribe that one has some genealogical relationship irrespective of ‘blood quanta’ plus some unspecified ‘cultural identification’ as Maori. Hence Auckland artist and academic Peter Robinson is listed by Auckland Art Gallery as a ‘Maori artist’, though Peter Robinson’s most famous paintings incorporate his theme ‘I am 3.125% Maori’ and use this for artistic advancement.
The reductio ad absurdum of such affiliations is, as almost all non-African peoples have between 1.5 to 3.5% Neanderthal and Denisovan genome, one could quite easily ‘identify as belonging’ to some Indigenous Nation with less than 1% ‘ancestry’, while having considerably more Neanderthal and Denisovan makeup that has been ‘culturally suppressed’.
On the other hand, why can’t everyone non-African who posts on this board officially identify as Neanderthal? We all are interested in evolution, after all.
My understanding (correct me if am wrong), is that southern Africans tend not have the Neanderthal gene. That would make southern Africans pure blooded [/tongue in cheek]
Yes. I have occasionally jousted with white supremacists online. It gives me great pleasure to point out to them that, in the biological sense, African blacks are the ‘purebred’ homo sapiens sapiens and we whites are the mongrel mixed race. 🙂
Not that I think such categorizations really mean anything of moral or social significance, but if the skinheads insist on using them, I’m going to throw them back in their face.
Sounds like fun. I once had a homophobe so worked up using a similar tactic he had the attention of everyone in the bar. Including at least one gay couple.
“Homosexuality isn’t natural!”
“Well, actually it is. It has been observed in several other species”
. . . and so on.
Perfectly fair game, I’d say. And probably the quickest and likeliest route to some degree of enlightenment – not that any route is particularly quick or likely.
And funny enough I think Sam Harris got in trouble for making this little joke on Twitter a few years ago and mocking white supremecists.
Yes he did! Only reason I remember it is that I wrote an answer on Quora about it in response to a no doubt intentionally provocative non-question. He was joking / trolling white supremacists in just the way that Eric described.
Ramesh’s idea is brilliant. I hereby now identify myself a member of the Neanderthal Community, and expect to be addressed by the Neanderthal personal pronouns ᚼᛅᛚᛚᚬ and ᛘᛁᛏᚴᛅᚱᛏ. I expect to complain to the DEI office that common pejorative use of the noun and adjective “Neanderthal” makes me feel unsafe. And I will petition my University to establish a department of Neanderthal Studies. Or rather, Critical Neanderthal Studies.
I acknowledge the stewardship of the Neanderthal 1st Tribes and Denisovan 2nd Tribes who were the original Homo Sapiens over much of Eurasia, and respect their bestowal of words such as ‘lox’ [ salmon ] and ‘ewa’ [ water ] to the settler-colonists who invaded in subsequent climes.
I am reminded of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime. Lovely book. Noah identifies as ‘black’ in his book, Fair enough, but in South African parlance he is definitely ‘coloured’. White father and black mother as it happens. Noah’s world was closer to black rather than coloured. Culturally.
So … I sort of get Dolezal’s position. Somehow, her neuronal configuration has identified itself as being black, for whatever causal chain of events that led up to it.
. . .or she was dissembling, and made up a convenient origin myth to explain why it must be so.
We get a lot of that up here.
Her neural pathways formed so that she can dissemble? I suppose so?
His tweets (at least the type of tweet being discussed here – no doubt he tweets many different things) are intentionally provocative. The “Discuss” at the end gives this away: he wants people to object to the claim and then explain why. This is pretty good classroom pedagogy, because it encourages critical thinking and challenges the listener to adopt a more academic, “objective” mindset (i.e. put aside one’s feelings and try and reason through some position). However twitter followers aren’t students, the populace at large isn’t in some class, and it is somewhat naive (IMO) to think that just because you [the tweet author] want your audience to act like students in a class taking on some challenging idea, that they want to act that way. So while I often agree with what he says, i think he his spitting into the wind in terms of constantly using a form of media for what it is not designed to do. It’s like filling a newspaper advertisement with a giant block of 10-point text and then, when readers get angry and say “what the heck did you do THAT for?”, telling them that they just aren’t reading the ad for content like they should. No my good sir, they know exactly how to read ads. You are simply mistaking the media “ad” for “book.”
Alice and Bob have two kids: Aalice and Abob. Afterwards they break up. Bob then has two kids with Charlize: Balice and Bbob. Sadly Alice, Bob, Charlize, Abob and Bbob all die before they can have any (more) kids. Aalice goes on to marry Dave and their great-umpty kids are humans. Balice goes on to marry Ethan and their great-umpty kids are wombats. There was no moment in history when two siblings born to the same mother became the ancestor of humans and wombats: Aalice’s only full sib died before having kids, Balice’s only full sib died before having kids, and Aalice and Balice don’t share a mother.
So you now need to trace those two mothers back to the point where their great-great-whatever grandmothers *were* two siblings of one mother.
I liked Eric’s story and want to dig deeper. I first encountered the idea in The Ancestor’s Tale (IIRC), but don’t remember any discussion about ‘mothers’. I assumed monogamous pairs and full siblings, but could see that as a mistake.
In any case, the MRCA could possibly be traced through ancestors Alice and Charlize, of David and Ethan, of Alice and Ethan, or of Charlize and David, right? The original rule was not strictly matrilineal, was it? It’s been a few years since I last read it.
Easy peasy in principle. You repeat the relational pattern all the way back to the inception of sexual reproduction in single celled organisms.
Did that happen? Well it’s so improbable I think it’s fair to say no. Realistically, somewhere back in time Aalice and Balice share a female ancestor. But Dawkins’ claim that it is necessarily true that they must share such an ancestor is wrong. We can construct a viable, possible past that is fully consistent with what we know about reproduction, in which they had no common ‘female’ ancestor (until you get back to single-celled organisms that mix sexual and asexual reproduction.)
So I’m gonna say he’s wrong about the necessarily claim. But realistically nobody should bet on Aalice and Balice not sharing a great-umpty grandmother.
To pitch in:
Lineage sorting of genes – speciation – isn’t immediate so I read this as “must be at least one moment in history”.
I wouldn’t analyze the process on a non-population basis, but you can do these types of coalescent analyses to estimate most recent common ancestor. The relation between actual gene ancestors (such as “mitochondrial Eve”) and individual ancestors (such as ancestor of extant populations, which are much younger) is both too wide and too narrow (myopic).
So is the attempt to modify an extant elephant to be more like a mammoth an example of trans-species? Discuss.
Yes, that classroom analogy captures it well. It’s a bit like the clueless people who approach a strange housecat and try to pet it and pick it up, and then are puzzled if it reacts with scratching and biting. They think if they approach the cat with friendly intent, the cat should know this somehow, and treat them in a friendly way in response. And they get upset if the cat doesn’t see it that way.
“Here kitty kitty kitty, let me pet you – Ouch!”
“Here twitty twitty twitty, let’s discuss … – Ouch!”
There are lots of people I know who have found him irritating. I find him interesting, but socially awkward in some way. I suppose I cannot imagine having an ordinary conversation with him. Referring back to Mayr, he was not a fan of RD I saw on a video clip some years ago.
At least he will never be cancelled – he was never endorsed!
He has also, obviously, enjoyed a regular woke-poke provoke in recent years! 😁 I think that is a fun activity! 👍
Dawkins’ piece is excellent, although the sentence ‘I doubt that Jan Morris would have had much time for a man who simply flings on a frock and announces, “I am now a woman.” ‘ will be seized on by those looking for something to vilify him for. (His footnote about being “Never dexterous with my toes, I am content to register awareness while ploughing on flat-footed, as a well-meaning scientist and lover of the English language” notwithstanding.)
Such hypodescent has always been the practice in this nation.
For mixed-race people, the black community has long served as “home,” in the sense that Robert Frost used that term in “The Death of the Hired Man” — “the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Oh, glad to hear you’ve “sorted out” that first tweet about branching ancestors of species – I remember when you mentioned it and was waiting to hear more about the contention.
Yes, I was wrong, but glad to be wrong because I learned something. (You have to think hard about that one!) What humiliated me is that I tried to explain to Richard Dawkins why he was wrong when he turned out to be right!
Yeah! I remember the whole second chapter of The Greatest Show On Earth fleshed that out extensively with a lot of mental hand-holding, as it were. I’ve listened to that and thought about it from other angles, and while nothing about it raises any flags in my mind, I’m still not sure it’s ever “clicked” on an intuitive level in the way so many other intellectual-first things previously have for me. (Please feel encouraged to elaborate on whatever you think you recently realized if you haven’t yet done so in the comments or in posts.)
As I noted above I think Dawkins should be read “must be at least one moment in history”. Because studying lineage sorting on the individual level is (too) myopic.
My recollection of l’affaire Dolezal is that among older black folk — the ones old enough to have a living memory of when “passing” (as the fictional professor, Coleman Silk, had done in Philip Roth’s campus novel The Human Stain) was the most direct route to success and economic security — at least some initially saw it in a sense as a mark of progress: at long last someone finally saw some benefit to “passing” in the opposite direction.
I have always been uncomfortable with racial classification, particularly the one drop rule to establish a person’s right to call himself/herself Black. As pointed out in the post, it is the adoption of a classification system used in the slaveholding South as well as the Nazis. Not only does it have odious connotations, but it has the effect of dividing people. I am perhaps naïve, but I hold to the old-fashioned view at one time held by liberals that it is not healthy for a society for people to think of themselves primarily in racial or ethnic terms. It is just another means for people to hate each other. I can understand that racial/ethnic identification is necessary to prevent discrimination or for medical reasons, but this is nothing to be particularly proud of.
Many years ago there was a racial census held at a government office that I worked. One question asked what racial/ethnic group I identified with. At first, I was not going to answer the question. But on second thought, I reconsidered because one choice was Pacific Islander. So, I checked that box. Why not? Since seeing “Mutiny on the Bounty” with Marlon Brando, I I could think of no group other than Pacific Islanders that I most identified with. 😊
I couldn’t agree with you more, but we must take the world as we find it, not as we wish we’d find it.
PS, If you’re heading to Tahiti anytime soon, Mr. Christian, let me know; I just might join you. 🙂
I still maintain that Dolezal’s problem is that she lied to her chosen community. Had Dolezal explained her position to her NAACP chapter up front, and they had accepted it and elected her to office later anyway, nobody would have cared as that would’ve been their choice. ‘Identifying as black’ wasn’t her crime. ‘Lying about her background’ was her crime.
The case of Rachel Dolezal, who now also goes by Nkechi Amare Diallo, is somewhat (trigger warning!) “problematic” ( sorry!) in that according to Time:
https://time.com/3921964/rachel-dolezal-howard-university/
I pretty much agree with any views on biology Richard Dawkins has chosen to make public.
I like his poetic thoughts too.
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
I detect a logic gap: sex is not a single-gene trait. Discuss.
But sex in mammals is a single-chromosome trait: it depends on whether the zygote received a sperm bearing an X or a Y chromosome from
the male parent—in other words, discrete binary alternatives. The element of discrete, binary factors is what was staring Biologists in the face, but only
Mendel realized that this principle could apply to inheritance generally.
Crocodiles and turtles do not even need single-gene or single-chromosome traits for sex to be binary. Sex depends on the mean temperature of eggs development. A mean temperature above or below a certain threshold triggers different gene regulation processes that lead to two sexes.
Still, each chromosome includes many genes, even when the chromosome is faithfully reproduced. It’s not like having the gene OR26A or not and finding that cilantro tastes like soap or not.
Rachel Dolezal has 1 Haitian and 3 African-American siblings. Her parents adopted them. She has more black siblings than most black folks.
I don’t think the “one drop” rule applies. After all, it didn’t help Elizabeth Warren when she claimed native Americans ancestry. I think Obama and Markle are classified as black simply because they don’t look white. It is literally skin deep.
Race as anything more than a few biological traits is an incoherent concept. The average black person in the USA has far more in common with the average white person in the USA than they do with anybody from Subsaharan Africa. I once heard a black British stand up comic say (unfortunately, I’ve forgotten her name) “I went to Nigeria to find my roots. I found my roots are in Hackney*”
*part of London.
I don’t think race is any less coherent a concept than something like dog breeds. It’s simply genetic commonalitites based upon lineage. Although race and culture are associated, it doesn’t mean they refer to the same thing.
No I don’t think “race” really refers to anything much. As soon as you try to tease out some sort of meaning, to “race” it slips away.
Is “black” a race? Does it not seem odd to lump a fair proportion of all the inhabitants of Africa in a box together with a smallish part of the European and North American population? What do they have in common except certain physical traits?
Much like with dog breeds I don’t think they need anything more than common traits in order for the classification to be both valid and, in certain circumstances, useful.
That is interesting. I did not know Meghan Markle before her engagement with Harry.
So when I saw a picture of her and the media stated that she had a white father and an African-American mother, my first spontaneous thought was: “No way. Really?” For me, she could also pass for a Southern European.
In the end, it was for me again an indication of how absurd this frantic adherence to race or racial characteristics is.
“I went to Nigeria to find my roots. I found my roots are in Hackney” – I’ve got a vague feeling that it could be one of Gina Yashere’s lines, but I’m not certain.
The “one drop” idea is actually cultural. I had a friend who was half black and had a “white” mother who was actually part Choctaw. According to what he told me, before about mid twentieth century, if you had any ancestry at all that was not white, you were “with them.” Same thing applied to Jews also.
In any case, I think at one time people were careful to differentiate between sex and “gender.” And I do believe that although sex is mostly binary, GENDER is a spectrum, and there are various degrees of masculinity and femininity within each sex. Let’s not forget about intersex persons. These people lead normal productive lives other than having atypical sex organs. In fact, researchers have found differences in the brains of men/women who self identify as homosexual, along with other physiological differences. Some of these include ‘digit ratio,’ brain differences, waist ratios, and facial features. In fact there is a biological (and maybe even epigenetic) basis for many of these variations within sexes. And certainly it would be a mistake to predict someone’s personality, music preferences, or talents based solely on their sex.
That being said, I think that there still is value to keeping statistical/demographic information with regards to sex as well as race. This kind of information has medical value with regards to predicting risks for certain diseases and risk factors for other things (suicide, poverty, etc.)
[emphasis mine]
Until very recently, transgenders who transitioned faced tremendous social costs, losing jobs, families, friends, social networks. They faced bigotry and ostracization from society. In the face of all that, who could possible doubt the torture they must have felt inside themselves to take such a step? You could be certain that none did it lightly.
Activism has very rightly removed those social costs, and transgender activists should be proud of what they’ve accomplished. But I don’t think they recognize that the sword of social acceptance has two edges.
I think the dramatic increase in transgenderism is not because more transgenders have the courage to come out (certainly some is no doubt due to this) but for the same reason people use more of something if it’s cheap or free. In liberal communities it costs nothing to declare yourself transgender; there is often even a reward in the form of likes on social media and an instant community of people that will attack anyone that questions you. (I am emphatically not saying that straight kids are pretending to be trans for approbation.)
You never used to see folks de-transition, because when you took that step you knew it was right for you. I still think there are a lot of genuine trans folks, and they deserve full respect and rights in our society, but I fear that we’ve made the cost so low that a lot of confused kids are coming to believe that they are transgender when they aren’t.
[NB, I usually post here with my full name, but for reasons I think we can all understand I’m leaving my last name off this post.]
I agree with much of what you said, but what I find most interesting is that you would think you need to be anonymous to post such a benign statement, and possibly rightly so. I think it shows how quick many on the left are to denounce anyone that strays from the orthodoxy.
No kidding. I may be overly paranoid, because I’m a nobody with no intention of becoming a public figure l, but I may apply for a job someday. Unlike JK Rowling, I’m not “cancel-proof.”
Jerry writes, “Among all people, evolutionary biologists should most understand that sex in humans and many other species is not only binary, but that binary-ness is the product of natural selection”
But, surely, the fundamental cause of the binary-ness of sex is that cell fission produces 2 cells from 1, and fusion of 2 haploid cells does the reverse. It’s binaries all the way down. If, somehow, trichotomies and tri-fusions were the typical method of cell reproduction, then multicellular animals & plants might well have 3 distinct sexes.
Agreed that NS produces the specialization of egg and sperm roles etc etc etc,, but the fundamental binary may just be essentially a by-product of mitosis/meiosis.
Sorry, but you’re wrong. Natural selection has produced heteromorphic sex chromosomes to assure that the number of males and females are roughly equal, and that there are no intersexes due to recombination.
I love the assurance with which you say “surely.” I guess you haven’t read the literature on this issue.
Okay, I read Dawkins wonderful Aero piece and marvel that he has lost none of his prowess. I think he has no equal as a popular science writer. What comes through is not just his clarity of thought but also his humanity. But now I’m flummoxed by the thought experiment of the siblings and wombat. My inclination is to say the statement is wrong. No two siblings need be the ancestor of ALL humans and ALL wombats. But given who’s making the claim and given that Prof Coyne says he’s come around, I’m willing to suppose I must be wrong. I don’t want to parse the endless Twitter thread and while I have a copy of the Ancestor’s Tale (autographed by Dawkins, no less!) it’s 300 miles away. Can someone point me to a cogent explanation (online) of why this claim has to be true, if such exists? We’d all love to see the correspondence between Jerry and Richard alluded to!